A scene from The American Dream and Other Fairy Tales (Fork Films)

The new documentary The American Dream and Other Fairy Tales offers an inside look at one of America’s most famous and valuable businesses, the Walt Disney Company. Narrated by Abigail E. Disney, the granddaughter of Roy Disney (Walt’s brother and the company’s first CEO), it tracks her efforts to understand how the country arrived at this moment of grotesque wealth inequality, with Disney as the key example. At its best, the film features compelling chronicles of exploited workers at the Disneyland theme park in Anaheim, California. When it attempts to tell the story of how we got here, though, it reveals how even the most well-intentioned efforts to critique capitalism can all too easily perpetuate capitalist ideology.

Abigail is a true believer in solving the problem of wealth inequality, there’s no question about that. Take a look at her Twitter feed on any given day and you’ll find her lambasting rich CEOs. She knows she benefits from the corporate greed she critiques and feels a moral obligation to use her wealth to do what she can to change the system that creates such wealth for a tiny elite. (She inherited Disney stock, which has become more valuable as conditions for Disney workers get worse.)

In this way, she is something of a class traitor, in the best American tradition. President Franklin D. Roosevelt was a member of an aristocratic family, and he spent his life creating social programs to help the working class. Yet FDR, or his New Deal policies, aren’t mentioned here. Instead, there is a vague thesis that corporate America used to be better and somehow lost its way. But this is not necessarily the case. The social improvements that workers experienced did not happen because capitalists were nicer back then but because New Deal policies treated corporate America as what they were, and still are: the enemy of the working class. While running for reelection in 1936, FDR said: “Never before in all our history have these forces [the business class] been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me—and I welcome their hatred.” Toward the beginning of her film, Abigail sends a cordial email to Disney CEO Bob Iger, asking him to address the wretched conditions of Disneyland workers (who are called “castmembers.”) He ignores her, of course. Why wouldn’t he? CEOs aren’t going to acknowledge that their companies make their fortune by exploiting workers.

For example, in 2018, Bob Iger made 1,424 times the median Disney worker pay. Abigail doubts that under Roy and Walt’s leadership that would have happened because she has a sense that they were men of a different moral fiber. They weren’t, of course—Walt fought hard against unionization of employees at his animation studio in the early 1940s. As CEO, Roy Disney “only” made 78 times what his workers made because there was a certain sense that such things simply weren’t done back then and that has been lost, according to his niece. Huh? As if a 78 to 1 pay ratio has any kind of moral status.

During the pandemic, when Disney furloughed tens of thousands of workers and the company stock price soared, Abigail went on TV and said that the stock price being so divorced from what’s happening with workers is a “complete moral breakdown of this entire system.” But that is not true—enriching shareholders at the expense of workers is what capitalism is. It isn’t a breakdown. It’s how the system works. There never was a golden age of moral capitalism that we have somehow lost. This is in itself a fairy tale—ironic given the title of the documentary.

In trying to deconstruct the myth of the Disney behemoth as a benign actor in American society, the film falls into another trap—propping up the myth that there was a kind of golden age of American capitalism, when the system was good and designed for the masses. The film’s grasping around for answers to why wealth inequality is so rampant is frustrating because there is nothing to be confused about—this is what capitalism always has been and always will be.

Throughout, Abigail interviews a Harvard Business School professor for insight into how corporate America used to be more decent but, at some point, lost its way. The professor, Rebecca M. Henderson, states that Harvard Business School’s motto used to be “making a decent profit decently.” Abigail’s face lights up at hearing this—this is exactly what she’s looking for. Keep in mind, however, that Harvard Business School was founded in 1908, at the dawn of corporate America, when the titans of industry were making astronomical profits, often treating their workers poorly, and using violent measures to bust up unions and labor strikes.

This was also the height of the Progressive Era when real gains were being made for worker’s rights. The power of taxation was being greatly expanded during this time. President Theodore Roosevelt advocated both a federal income tax and a modern estate tax, which became law in the years following his presidency. Harvard Business School was part of an effort by corporations and the rich to counteract all this, to paint themselves as something loftier than advocates for corporations. This was the school’s initial ideological function, and it has played that role ever since, in various ways. The fact that Abigail sought much guidance from a Harvard Business School professor tells you all you need to know about the limitations of this film.

Nevertheless, the documentary is worth seeing for how it shines a light on the exploitation of Disneyland workers—and for insight into how the city of Anaheim gives all kinds of subsidies and tax breaks to the park while the city around it crumbles. However, its larger thesis—that a bygone era of conscientious capitalism needs to be regained—misses the mark.